1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an information providing system, an information providing apparatus, an information providing method, and a program storing medium, and more particularly, is suitably applied to an information providing system in which information is provided over a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Webs (that is, WWW: World Wide Web) which are information networks which relates various information of web servers separately existing on a network to each other so as to search are widely used as an information providing service on the network such as the Internet.
A user's terminal connected to such a network transmits a request for taking out desired information (that is, a web page), to a web server on the basis of a predetermined protocol, using a web browser which is viewing software for webs.
Then, the web server returns web page data in response to the taking-out request, which is transmitted from the user's terminal, based on the predetermined communication protocol, so as to display the web page, which is desired by the user, on the user's terminal.
By the way, out of such web servers, some web servers create and transmit web page data having the contents suitable for each user, on the basis of personal information of a user (hereinafter, referred to as user information) inputted with the user's terminal.
This user information includes an address, a name, a handle name (a fictitious name used for the Internet), and hobbies.
The web server extracts information suitable for, for example, the user's hobbies from an enormous amount of information possessed by the server, based on the user information, so that web pages having the contents suitable for the user's hobbies can be provided.
Then the web server files the inputted user information in an information file called a cookie, and stores the cookie in the user's terminal.
The user's terminal transmits the cookie together with the taking-out request to the web server when accessing the web server again.
Then, the web server creates web page data based on the cookie added to the taking-out request, which can effectively utilize the user information inputted once, again and again.
Here, when a user accesses the web server with his terminal in his house and inputs user information, the web server stores a cookie for the user in his terminal in his house.
Therefore, if the user in his office tries to access the web server using his terminal installed in his office, the web server can not get his cookie since his cookie is stored in his terminal in his house. As a result, web page data suitable for the user information can not be provided.
As described above, such a web server makes a user's terminal store user information as a cookie, which causes a problem that the web server can not provide web page data based on the user's cookie when the user accesses the web server using user's another terminal different from that used when inputting the user information, because user's another terminal does not store the cookie for the user.